Yahoo China missing from Microsoft search deal

The search tie-up between Yahoo and Microsoft does not affect Yahoo's China properties, which are controlled by e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, the group said Thursday.

It was not immediately clear if Microsoft would seek a separate deal with Alibaba regarding Yahoo's China search engine, but the statement announcing the partnership between the two U.S. companies billed it as "global."

Microsoft and Yahoo this week announced a long-anticipated deal on Internet search. The algorithm used by Microsoft's Bing search engine is set to power Yahoo searches as well for the next ten years, while Yahoo will sell premium search advertising services for both companies, they said. In exchange for its added traffic, Microsoft will pay Yahoo an 88 percent cut of the search revenue generated on sites owned and operated by Yahoo.

But the deal does not affect Yahoo's China properties, an Alibaba spokesman said. Yahoo China is "managed independently of whatever Yahoo U.S. chooses to do," he added via text message.

Yahoo obtained a 40 percent stake in Alibaba Group in 2005. As part of that deal, Yahoo gave control of its China operations to Alibaba.

The Microsoft-Yahoo statement on the search deal said that "Yahoo will continue to syndicate its existing search affiliate partnerships," an apparent reference to Yahoo China.

A Microsoft representative declined to comment, referring to the press release for details. Yahoo did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Microsoft and Alibaba representatives did not comment when asked if the companies are in talks. But Steve Ballmer and Jack Ma, the CEOs of the two companies, have met twice in recent months. Ma and other top Alibaba executives met Ballmer during a March visit to the U.S., where they discussed potential partnerships with companies including Microsoft, eBay and Google. Ballmer later visited Alibaba's headquarters in Hangzhou, China, while visiting the city in May to announce a deal with the local government.

Alibaba operates leading e-commerce Web sites in China, including business-to-business site Alibaba.com and auction platform Taobao.

Microsoft reveals Office 2010 timing, technical preview

As expected, Microsoft on Monday revealed a test version of the next round of its Office suite of products, which will be available in the first half of 2010.

At its Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans, Microsoft released a preview of Office 2010 and Visio 2010 to all attendees as part of a Technical Preview program. Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 and Project 2010 are also in technical preview, but to a more limited number of participants, the company said. Another Office 2010 product, Exchange Server, has been in beta since April.

Office remains the de facto standard for office productivity among both businesses and consumers. However, companies like Google and others are trying to challenge Microsoft with free Web-based versions of applications similar to Word, PowerPoint and Excel, which make up the core of Office.

What Microsoft didn't release at the show, and what many expected, was a test preview of Microsoft's answer to these challenges - Office Web apps, a free, Web-based version of Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote.

However, Microsoft did demonstrate the online suite at the conference during a keynote by Microsoft Business Division President Stephen Elop, who said a technical preview would be available in August, followed sometime after by a public beta.

Microsoft first unveiled Office Web apps at its Professional Developers Conference late last year. Many had expected Microsoft to reveal its plan for the Web-based apps sooner. However, next to its Windows OS, Office remains a primary driver of Microsoft's revenue, so the company has a vested interest in keeping Office on the desktop to cater to its install base and keep its dominant position in the market.

Customers will be able to get Office Web apps in a number of ways. It will be free for anyone who wants to use the basic version, and business customers can get a paid version that they can either run on-premise on their own SharePoint Server back-end or as a hosted service from Microsoft.

Microsoft is making the apps available in a variety of ways so hundreds of millions of users will have access to them immediately upon release, Elop said.

Jive, SAP partner on 'social BI'

SAP and enterprise social-networking vendor Jive said Tuesday they have formed an agreement that will see SAP's BusinessObjects BI OnDemand software integrated with Jive's community and collaboration platform.

The companies made the announcement at the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston.

Jive's roughly 3,000 customers, many of which are large enterprises, "are looking to visualize and understand how social software is driving the bottom line," said Christopher Morace, senior vice president of products.

In a demonstration, the vendors showed how an administrator could use the BI capabilities for broad analyses, such as how many users are posting content to a company's community site.

The software could be used in a variety of other scenarios as well. For example, a user looking at a data set pulled from a company CRM (customer relationship management) system could share it with others by adding a widget to a blog post. Or a sales manager could use the tools to analyze the interactions between employees who worked on successful deals, as well as ones the company lost.

In general, the tools will help companies provide rank-and-file business users with analytic capabilities, Morace said. "Right now, most people can't even get their hands on the data."

Pricing for the BI capabilities hasn't been finalized, Morace said.

The announcement was just one in a number made by vendors Tuesday in conjunction with the conference, which runs through Thursday. Among the releases:

- Socialtext rolled out a version of its collaboration platform that is available at no charge for up to 50 users. It includes dashboards, wikis, Twitter-style messaging and other functions. The company also announced the public beta of SocialCalc, a spreadsheet aimed at distributed teams. Its development is being led by Dan Bricklin, co-creator of the seminal VisiCalc spreadsheet.

- Bluenog announced the 4.5 version of its ICE platform, which pulls together a variety of open-source components into a unified portal, content management and BI system. The new release features wikis, group calendaring and improved central administration.

- Content management vendor Open Text announced that a social media module to its suite will be available in July. The new capabilities include personal dashboards, wikis, blogs, profiles and communities, as well as iPhone and BlackBerry support.

Russia launches antitrust case against Microsoft over XP

Russian antitrust regulators are investigating Microsoft's retirement of Windows XP and could file formal charges as early as next month, according to a government statement on Thursday.

The Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) accused Microsoft of abusing its dominant position in the operating system market by pulling Windows XP from retail in June 2008, thus forcing users to buy Vista - even though demand for the former remained high.

"Analysis of various operating systems show that the transition to the new operating system Windows Vista comes with the continued demand for the previous operating system, Windows XP," said FAS in a Thursday statement (as translated by Google Translate). "Demand of Windows XP is also confirmed by retailers and the number of orders in the field of public procurement."

FAS also charged Microsoft with violating Russian antitrust laws by setting different prices for the same product, a possible reference to the practice where Microsoft lets computer makers factory-downgrade PCs to XP Professional from either Vista Business or Vista Ultimate, the two highest-priced retail editions of that 2007 operating system.

"The case against Microsoft Corp. will be considered July 24, 2009," said FAS.

Microsoft did put an end to retail sales of Windows XP Home and Professional last June, although the former remains available to netbook makers and the latter can be installed as a downgrade from Vista. Microsoft has said it will stop shipping downgrade XP media to OEMs at the end of July, but there have been signs the aging operating system will live on; reports have claimed that a free or discounted upgrade to Windows 7 will be offered to customers who purchase a downgraded-to-XP PC between June 26, 2009, and Jan. 31, 2010.

Microsoft said it has not seen the formal complaint. "Microsoft has not yet received notice of any new investigation," said company spokesman Jack Evans in an e-mail Friday. "However, we will cooperate with any inquiry and remain committed to full compliance with Russian law."

Parts of the FAS explanation for its investigation resemble a lawsuit filed in U.S. federal court by a California woman last February. At the time, Emma Alvarado accused Microsoft of breaking consumer protection laws by barring computer makers from continuing to offer XP on new PCs after Vista's early-2007 launch. Alvarado's case, which is seeking class-action status, is on hold while the courts consider Microsoft's request that it be rolled into other antitrust issues that go as far back as 1998.

Microsoft is also facing antirust action in the European Union, which filed charges against the company in January over its bundling of Internet Explorer (IE) with Windows. The EU's antitrust agency is expected to order Microsoft to change Windows so that it offers users a "ballot screen" where they can choose from a number of browsers, including IE and rivals such as Mozilla's Firefox and Opera Software's Opera.

Late last month, Microsoft canceled a hearing on the charges, saying that senior regulators wouldn't attend because of a scheduling conflict with a major antitrust and competition conference. The hearing was slated to take place this week, starting Wednesday and ending today.